


A Comforting Closeness

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cassian Andor-centric, Cooking, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Light-Hearted, One Shot, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, discussions of canon-typical past, sharing traditions, what do rebellion officers do with their paychecks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 15:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17962997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Cassian is the one with the reputation as a cook. Jyn decides to make a recipe from her childhood, with mixed results.A sweet and fluffy RebelCaptain one shot!





	A Comforting Closeness

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is lovingly known as "what on earth is an egg cosy" in my heart. Pairs well with softboiled eggs or your preferred breakfast food.  
> Thank you for reading. Comments welcome!

The kitchen on the remote outpost they’re both stationed at is less of a kitchen and more of a supply closet with a faucet and a cooking unit. It means they’re pressed together in close proximity, something still rare for them, something both are still getting used to. If it wasn’t for Cassian’s overall tendency towards grace and ability to pivot, they would have broken at least one bowl tonight. Jyn seems to see the tiny space as far bigger than it is and is, as always, a little too unaware of all the extra details around around her when she’s focused on a task. It’s what makes her an excellent brawler, but not an ideal spy. It’s why Cassian was very glad when Kes took her under his wing recently for a reassignment away from Military Intelligence. Because, as evidenced tonight, Jyn is a mission-focused person, not a detail-oriented one.

For example, he thinks, she seemed to be fine with the water simply being _hot_ rather than _boiling._

"So what am I doing with this egg?” Cassian asks, still holding the strainer of eggs under the cool water. He's grumbling, only a little, but mostly because Jyn smiles when he does so. Just like he has a tendency to smile when she makes terrible puns. Both of them have soft little secret sides they've only started to reveal to each other, as rare and tender as the first buds of spring. Both of them are so much more than the practical people they must be for the Rebellion. But neither of them, at least, not yet, truly understand all of the other one's little quirks. Like this so-called recipe of Jyn's that she insisted they try at an hour past midnight.

“You set them in these.” Jyn pushes over little ceramic cups, like the strange hybrid of a wine glass and a candlestick. He’s got no idea where they came from, and like all the little oddities Jyn has pulled out of a literal sleeve, he decides its better not to ask. 

“Right. What do those do.”

“They hold the eggs.”

“Hold them for what.”

“Eating.”

“Don’t hands perform that same task?”

Jyn scrunches up her nose, clearly trying to find an answer. He knows he shouldn’t press too hard, even teasingly. It’s taken her years to share something from her childhood. “I guess… so they look cozy.”

“To look cozy.”

“Yeah.”

“The eggs have to be cozy before we eat them.” Cassian says, He’s a trained intelligence operative. He has three degrees (one of which is even earned under his real name.) He can speak seven languages. He cannot believe he’s just spoken that sentence.

“I guess?” Jyn sets one egg inside one little cup. “I think my mom… I think she even had once… knitted little hats for them.”

Hats. For eggs. Right. “My mother wove blankets.”

“For eggs?” Jyn sets the other egg in the second cup and pushes it in front of him. She's being a little silly on purpose, which means she must have caught how much his last mission has cost him, the shadows in his eyes only she sees.

Cassian shakes his head, trying to imagine any Festian, for whom practicality and economy of time instructed all their actions, traditions, and yes, even meals, weaving anything for eggs. “No. Just. Blankets. To stay warm.”

Jyn’s eyes grow wide. Neither of them are that old, though both are too worn down to ever be called young. But he still loves the small moments where he gets to see past her hard edges. “Like yours,” she whispers.

Cassian swallows. Damn it. He hadn’t wanted to share. Not yet. It was too personal. Too much.

But he couldn’t be a hypocrite. If Jyn felt safe enough to share this odd little meal, he could at least offer her one truth from his childhood. He nods. “She wove it for me before I went to join the Festian resistance. To keep me warm.”

And that little sentence means so much, because Jyn knows the blanket well. Knows that the old, frayed blue blanket is child-sized, nothing that could keep a grown man, or even a half-grown teen, warm. It's a child’s blanket, woven for a child soldier. What he can’t tell Jyn, not yet, is that his mother had woven it assuming it would be his funeral shroud, too.

He tries to bring the mood back to something lighter. “Thanks for cooking.”

Jyn nods, as grateful for the diversion as him, probably. “You cook all the time. Bout time I get a chance to.”

“I didn’t realize I was closing out your culinary prowess,” Cassian murmurs. He takes in the room again, grounding himself in this present moment, in this reality. Studies the ramshackle kitchen, the ancient pot they’d boiled the eggs in, and the small heating unit he’d had to fight with to even get it to ignite, as if every detail might be vital in the future. An exercise in centering his thoughts, made far more enjoyable when it’s time to take her in, carefully watching her out of the corner of his eyes.

She’s dressed casually, in a shirt she’s stolen from him and a baggy pair of trousers stolen from who-knows where. At least the cardigan draped over her shoulders isn’t one that was stolen. He’d given it to her when he caught her shivering yesterday, too proud to mention her own discomfort.The baggy clothes cloak and reveal her frame in alternating measures as she moves closer to him. Kes has commented that between Cassian and Jyn, their combined stubborn pride could choke a bantha, and he’s probably right. It’s pride that got them into this whole situation in the kitchen, anyway. Jyn’s insistence she remembers the recipe, Cassian’s refusal to let her into the kitchen alone, given her tendency toward starting fires, both literal and metaphorical.

Her hair has mostly escaped the messy little braid he’d twisted into her locks a few hours ago, when she’d insisted on cuddling while he was trying to write up a report. He’d told himself it was simply practical to braid her hair to get it out of the way, and had nothing to do with how soft it was, how nice it smelled, like berries. Jyn’s meager salary as an officer went to little luxuries like scented soap, and though he found such things an absolute waste, he couldn’t bring himself to ever say to her. Maybe that's what love is. Enjoying the impractical, for once. 

Because he’d never forget her wide-eyed wonder when she’d gotten to unwrap the waxed paper covering a new bar of soap, the way she’d treated the simple fresher unit on Yavin like it had been a queen’s bathing chamber. 

Cassian could be practical enough for both of them. He used to refuse his pay, but now, he sets half aside, saving for a future that might never come. 

Although, if it does arrive, surpassing all of his wildest hopes, he reflects that he might need more than a half-paycheck a month to keep Jyn rich in new soap and fresh eggs. Not that she’d let him buy her things, either. So maybe it would all work out. 

Or maybe he’d get terrible food poisoning from eating this definitely-not-cooked enough egg tonight and all of his thoughts would be a moot point. 

“I do like cooking,” he finally says. Resists pointing out all the dishes he could have made with those eggs and leftovers remaining from last night.

“I was surprised when you cooked, the first time. It seems so… personal.”

It is, and yet, its not. He’s been cooking for the Rebellion since he joined, a lifetime ago. Back then it had been easier to share his past. Back then, he hid so little. So his reputation and his recipes had become well-known, and now, he cooks without ever having to share anything new about him.

“Anyway. These eggs are done.”

“Done.” He’s still skeptical. They’d boiled for a few minutes in some water. Plain water. Without even a twist of spices in paper (to be re-used easily) or some roots left over from vegetables (because every part of every edible plant has a purpose in the Festian kitchen.)

“Yup. Watch.” She taps the top of one egg with spoon. Maybe that’s why she likes this recipe. She gets to hit things.

The egg shell flakes off, added by Jyn’s quick fingers, revealing a soft white dome that looks barely set. “Tada!” she announces.

“Can we put spices in them?” Cassian asks, well aware his tone is more like a man bartering for his life. Mainly because he’s been that man. And yet, then, he hadn’t felt nearly as desperate as he does in this moment, staring down a bland, apparently runny-on-the-inside, egg. He should have told Jyn to donate them to the mess hall when she’d revealed a farmer nearby had given them to her in exchange for her soldering a gate shut. He should have, also, perhaps questioned why Jyn had taken soldering equipment off base.

In short, he should have done any number of practical, responsible things, instead of agreeing to meet her in this tiny kitchen for a late night snack. But she’d looked so hopeful, and he’s aware of how little they’ve seen each other lately, now that she’s a pathfinder and he’s back to Military Intelligence with Kay. He’s aware, too, that sharing things, both physical and emotional, doesn’t come easily to either of them, and if they want whatever-this-is between them to work, they both need to learn to bend, just a little.

Even if it means eating bland, runny, eggs. 

“Spices? Why?” Jyn asks, in only that way someone who, despite her later life, had her culinary memories set by core-world cooking.

“Because…” 

“I put salt on yours.”

“That’s…” not a spice. Not even close to being a spice, any more than you could call a landspeeder a hyperspace-ready ship. Cassian gives up.

Jyn’s happy with her egg, so he lets her take another spoonful, memorizing the way she looks when she’s lost in a rare pleasant memory of her past. Then, he does the one thing he can to escape his own food. He pulls Jyn into his arms, gently, but fast enough she can’t take another spoonful of the bland-as-kriff egg. Holds her for a moment, enjoying the softness of her smile. Then, he kisses her.

Unlike the soft boiled egg, the kiss has heat and spice and warmth, a thousand things he’s craved for so long. Unlike his blanket, too small for him now, Jyn fits just right in his arms. Unlike his past, the future with her is full of hope. Full of so many things he’d never considered before. A person to share meals with, to share traditions with. To teach and to learn from, and yes, to eat odd eggs in fussy little cups with. Although, “I draw the line at knitting them sweaters.”

Jyn looks up at him. “You can _knit?”_

“Where do you think that sweater you’re wearing came from?”

“A store.”

He laughs, softly, pressing a second kiss to her forehead. “You’re impossible, you know.”

“I really am.” She agrees, her cold hands sliding under his shirt to warm them on his skin. Softly, she admits, “I think I like your cooking better.”

A victory won from attrition is still a victory. “I think I might have a little more practice.” And, he thinks privately, a far more impressive culinary heritage to draw from. There’s a reason the Core worlds loved to mimic (and fail to reproduce) outer rim foods. They’re just better.

“Maybe…” Jyn kisses his neck, his shoulder, and he thinks he knows where this conversation is headed, until she asks, “we can start cooking together?”

The simple request means far more than the sum of its words. Cassian thinks back to a distant memory of his parents in their own kitchen not much bigger, nor fancier than this one. Yet there, the two had been a matched pair, one stirring, one frying, together in harmony, like every task was merely an extension of a dance they’d followed since the day they met. He imagines that with Jyn, and finds it so full of wonder he has to close his eyes, holding that bright joy inside him. “I’d like that.” 

“You still have to finish your egg though. Don’t let food go to waste.”

And on that, at least, they agree completely. They’re two practical soldiers, both more prepared for survival than for pleasure, though they’re learning, slowly, how to have both. Today it’s shared blankets and soft-boiled eggs. Perhaps someday it will be a real bed and a table laden with homemade food. 

They eat. In the end, Jyn does cave and let him sprinkle some pepper on his egg, which helps a fair amount. But really, the best seasoning is her simple little hum of happiness when she finishes her own egg. They then clean the dishes together, a small prelude, he thinks, to that day they might share a kitchen, a home, a future, and then, walk hand in hand back to their room.


End file.
